Hopefully, if you are planning to plant trees this coming winter you have your seedlings reserved. Supplies predictably dry up this time of year, creating stress for those landowners who haven’t planned ahead. Here’s a look at where seedling availability stands right now.

Both Columbia County Small Woodlands Association and Washington County Small Woodlands Association are sold out of pre-ordered Douglas-fir and western redcedar. CCSWA will have bags of both species for sale at their March 2019 public sale – first come, first served.

Nearly all area forest seedling nurseries that I looked into are sold out of Douglas-fir. Most are also sold out of western redcedar. Drakes Crossing Nursery in Silverton is still listing Douglas-fir and western redcedar online as available; they specialize in Christmas tree seedlings with 2+0, “unimproved” seedlings being their mainstay. Red alder and Valley ponderosa pine are generally more available at area nurseries.

Options for those still looking:

CCSWA public sale, Saturday, March 9th. Sale typically opens around 8:30 am. Arrive early for bag quantities!

Often people who pre-ordered from WCSWA or CCSWA will have surplus bags after they have finished planting. You can contact the sales chairs and ask to be notified if anyone has surplus to re-sell.

Likewise, large landowners sometimes have surplus seedlings at the end of the planting season. Try calling your local ODF office starting around March 1 to see whether they know of any surplus available. Also, groups like Women Owning Woodlands Network and OSWA chapters sometimes circulate information about surplus trees, so join one of these peer groups if you’re not already a member.

It’s always a good idea with surplus seedlings to ask how the bags have been stored, the nursery they were originally purchased from, and as much information as known about the seed zone.

Finally, check www.forestseedlingnetwork.com to see if seedlings are posted for sale. As of now, there is nothing for 2019, but sometimes there will be surplus posted.

Fall 2018

Amy Grotta OSU Extension Forestry & Natural Resources Faculty - Columbia, Washington & Yamhill Counties Office Location: Columbia County Extension Service, 505 N. Columbia River Hwy, St. Helens, OR 97051 Phone: (503) 397-3462 E-mail: amy.grotta@oregonstate.edu Web: http://extension.oregonstate.edu/columbia/forestry Blog: http://blogs.oregonstate.edu/treetopics

Mark your calendars for these education programs!

Saturday, October 13th, 9:00 am. Location: Columbia County Extension Office, 505 N. Columbia River Hwy, St. Helens

Columbia County resident Joe McGilvra has been producing maple syrup from bigleaf maple for the last several years. In winter

2017-18 he produced dozens of gallons! Joe will talk about what he’s learned about syrup production. Bring your questions. No

cost, but please RSVP in advance. Call Sonia Reagan, 503-397-3462 or email sonia.reagan@oregonstate.edu.

Tuesday, October 23rd, 1:00-5:00 pm, Washington County Extension Center, 1815 NW 169th Place, Beaverton

Wednesday, October 24th, 1:00-5:00 pm, Yamhill County Extension Office, 2050 Lafayette Ave, McMinnville

Thursday, October 25th, 1:00-5:00 pm, Columbia County Extension Office, 505 N. Columbia River Hwy, St. Helens

Are you working on a management plan for your woodland? Whether you’re trying to get started or in the process of updating an

old plan, this is an opportunity to get some help. Drop in to “office hours” to discuss your questions with your Extension Forester,

and get some traction on that plan, or how to implement it. Bring a copy of whatever you have, or even bring your laptop or tablet

if you like. No registration necessary, but it would be helpful to email amy.grotta@oregonstate.edu ahead of time so we know to

expect you.

Friday, November 2nd, 5:00-8:00 pm and Saturday, November 3rd, 9:00 am-5:30 pm, Hopkins Demonstration Forest, Oregon

City. Logging is a high-stakes endeavor that you may only carry out a few times in your lifetime as a woodland owner. This 1.5-

day symposium will help you plan and carry out a logging project with confidence. Speakers will include consulting foresters,

experienced landowners, log buyers, loggers, and representatives from the OSU Extension Service and Oregon Department of

Forestry. Topics will include sales fundamentals, road access, taxes and contracts, log scaling, getting fair value for your logs,

minimizing your liability, what a consulting forester can offer you, selecting a logger, and much more. Cost: $40/person before

10/15; $50/person 10/15-10/26. Cost includes Friday dinner and Saturday lunch. Registration closes 10/26; no walk-in

registrations. Register online with a credit card: https://tinyurl.com/sellinglogsymposium. For more information contact Jean

Bremer, 503-655-8631 or jean.bremer@oregonstate.edu.

Photo by Glenn Ahrens

By Brad Withrow-Robinson, OSU Forestry & Natural Resources Extension Adapted from TreeTopics blog, http://blogs.oregonstate.edu/treetopics, September 28, 2018

This year’s fires in eastern and southern Oregon, and especially California remind us that fire does not occur only in remote forest areas. It is common in rural areas, can affect farm lands, communities along the wildland-urban fringe, and can even cross the boundary into densely developed communities.

The scale and intensity of fires across the west are

increasing for many reasons including historic land

management and fire exclusion policies, development

patterns and recent climate patterns resulting in many

consecutive years of intense droughts. It is important for

people in western Oregon to realize that we too live in a fire

landscape, even though it is not as common as elsewhere in

the state.

It is now late September, and the smoky, hazy skies of

summer have passed, for the most part. But fires raged

across the West this summer, including several parts of the

state threatening homes, shutting down roads, closing

businesses, triggering evacuations, and affecting air quality

and human health. There are certainly some lessons to be

found in this. The memory of smoke is in the air adds some

urgency. Here are three things to think about:

Smoke has not been uncommon in the Valley and can be a significant health factor, even when from distant fires. Find more

about fires and your health at the AirNow webpage.

Evacuation Readiness should be on everyone’s mind. Even though it seems unlikely to many here it the valley, it needs to be

thought of and planned for. As the last two years have demonstrated in California, an urban address does not guarantee

safety. Yes, we’ve posted on preparedness before, because it matters.

The final thing I’d encourage you to do is to commit to some long term actions to prevent and prepare for wildfire. There are

many steps you can take to help keep your home and family safe in a fire-prone environment (which this is for several months

each summer).

There are many resources to help you learn about fires and your health, make an evacuation plan and identify actions you can

take to make your home and neighborhood safer from fire. But where to start? We have collected information to help you

address each of these things at the Forestry & Natural Resources Extension Fire Program website . Explore the Fire Adapted

communities tab at the top of the page.

Fire-damaged trees south of The Dalles, Oregon, 2018. Photo by Glenn Ahrens

From most to least widespread (approximately) in Oregon: Grand fir (Abies grandis), Pacific silver fir (A. amabilis), noble fir (A. procera), subalpine fir (A. lascocarpa), white fir (A. concolor), California red fir (A. magnifica)

I’ve been taking part in an OSU Extension program called

Oregon Season Tracker (OST) for about five years. OST is a

citizen science program where volunteers keep track of rainfall

and plant phenology (seasonal

growth patterns) and submit their

records to national databases. At our

office in St. Helens, we have an

approved rain gauge which we try to

check each morning, and a phenology

“garden” consisting of two large

Douglas-fir trees and some native

shrubs.

When I first got involved in OST, my

motivation was that I thought that

having some consistent record of

weather and phenology patterns

would ultimately be useful in my work

in Forestry & Natural Resources

Extension. I wasn’t quite sure exactly

how it would be useful. But I figured

that since weather affects trees in

many ways, something would come of

it; and even if not, I would be helping

scientists with THEIR research

questions.

Recently I put my data to use when a

puzzling Douglas-fir sample came

into the office. None of us had ever seen anything quite like it.

The current-year needles were stunted, curled, and dried out at

the tips (see photo). It sort of resembled light herbicide

damage, but the landowner affirmed that no spraying had been

done around these trees. Only a few of the landowner’s many

trees were affected; but of the ones that were, the symptoms

were present all over the tree, on the current-year needles only.

The next thing we considered was freeze damage; but this

spring was nowhere near freezing around here. Drought? The

symptoms aren’t quite consistent with what we usually see in

conifers from drought stress.

But the needles really did look scorched, so maybe intense heat

was the culprit. Could they have been damaged when they

were soft, shortly after budbreak? I went back and looked at the

phenology data that I recorded for the two Douglas-fir trees at

our office. This spring, the last “NO” I recorded for budbreak

was on April 27th, and the first “YES” was May 10th, so budbreak

on our two trees actually would have occurred sometime in that

two-week window. While there’s variation among trees of the

same species, it’s probably safe to assume that the landowner’s

trees also broke bud somewhere in that time frame, or perhaps

a day or so on either side, since his

location is close by.

Now for the heat. We had an early

heat spell in May, but exactly when

was it? For this, I needed to look up

temperature records, so I went to

the Oregon Climate Service website,

which houses records weather

station data from across the state

(including from OST volunteers!).

The nearest station with daily

temperature data was ten miles

away, at the Scappoose Airport. On

May 13 and 14, there was a high of

88 degrees, which ties the record

high for those dates. While that’s

not considered extreme heat, it

certainly is extreme for that time of

year. And it happened very soon

after Douglas-fir trees had broken

their buds.

So my theory? The few trees that

looked scorched were among the

budbreak “stragglers” – that is they

were among the last to break bud, and probably did so less than

a week before that hot weather. That’s why they were the only

trees that were damaged – because their needles were still very

young and tender.

My theory can’t be proven, but it sure was cool to have the

phenology records to back it up in this “sick tree” case.

Incidentally, of the three years I’ve observed these trees,

budbreak has occurred right around the same date. It will be

interesting to see whether they are that consistent every year

going forward.

To get involved in OST, have a look at the program website:

http://oregonseasontracker.forestry.oregonstate.edu/

By Amy Grotta, OSU Forestry & Natural Resources Extension

Current year needles were stunted with curled, dried tips.

Drones are becoming more popular to use in forestry. With recent innovations, small landowners are beginning to gain more

affordable access to this useful new technology. I spoke to Cory Garms, a PhD student at Oregon State University, about what

small acreage landowners might want to know about using drones to survey their own property.

What is a drone?

The terms drone and UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) are used interchangeably to

describe remote-controlled aircraft platforms which vary from the size of a hummingbird

to that of passenger planes and beyond. The two main types of UAVs are multirotor and

fixed-wing, which have unique strengths and weaknesses for flight much like helicopters

and airplanes. The term UAS (unmanned aerial system) refers to an aircraft (UAV) in

addition to the positioning hardware and sensor payload which enable the aircraft to

orient itself and collect data, respectively. The applications of this technology are

seemingly endless, but at OSU I use them to carry specialized cameras in order to

monitor forests and agricultural crops.

What are some common uses for drones in forestry today?

The uses are already quite diverse and they will continue to grow. Initially, I think foresters were pleased to use them to make

high resolution aerial maps of their forests for a fraction of the cost of hiring an airplane pilot. With the advent of sufficiently

small and light multispectral and thermal infrared sensors, the scope of data we can collect from UAS has grown from visual maps

into “stress” maps which help make inferences about the relative health of individual trees. Another exciting technology, LiDAR,

allows us to make remarkably accurate 3D reconstructions of forest scenes which can be used to measure tree dimensions with a

high level of confidence. There is also a push to develop UAS for applying chemicals like herbicides and fertilizers.

How might small acreage forest landowners use drones in their management planning?

Small forest landowners have lots of reasons to get

involved in drones. The most straightforward one is for

silvicultural planning using aerial maps. With a little

familiarity they would be able to make scaled maps of

their land that include tree height and spacing data that

are extremely useful when choosing when to thin and

when to cut. At a small scale, single tree selection would

probably be less costly and definitely be much faster

using UAS. The necessary hardware for this level of

analysis cost under $2K. Another option is attaching a

more expensive ($5-10K) multispectral sensor, which

could allow the landowner to visualize the “stress

responses” of individual trees. This gives researchers the

ability to make inferences about drought, disease, and

nutrient deficiencies. In a broad sense, this will likely

become a vital early detection tool for foresters.

Additional uses to carry out your management plan

(added by Lauren):

(continued on page 6)

By Lauren Grand, OSU Forestry & Natural Resources Extension Adapted from TreeTopics blog, http://blogs.oregonstate.edu/treetopics, August 15, 2018

Multirotor unmanned aerial system (UAS)

Aerial image of a recent timber harvest captured by a drone. Photo courtesy Patrick Sherman, Roswell Flight Test Crew

Streamline monitoring – if you have a large forest or don’t get out to all the corners often, you could use your drone to

monitor for extensive storm damage such as windthrow, look for health and disease issues (i.e. drought or root rot), or do a

post operation assessment (is slash piling necessary?).

Document actions – record keeping for your management plan just got more exciting! Get before and after photos of a

recent thinning or harvest, newly built roads, added ponds, or restoration of an oak woodland.

Reduce your risk to wildfire – Identify areas that have high fuel loads and monitor areas where you have done some fuels

reduction to stay on top of maintenance.

What are the benefits to small acreage forest landowners in hiring a professional consultant that uses drone technology?

The first step to implementing drones on your forest needs to be learning about them. Hiring a professional would, at the very

least, give a landowner the ability to see how flight operations work and begin looking at the products we are capable of creating

with these tools. My personal outlook is that small forest managers, like small farmers, are “do-it-yourselfers” who would

ultimately like to own and operate their own equipment. Some of the best companies are willing to educate clients and teach

them to collect the data themselves. This framework allows the landowner to spend a little more on quality data analytics

software to help them make decisions based on their imagery.

What are some of the regulations that small landowners need to be aware of when using drone technology?

The most important thing that people should be aware of is the FAA’s small UAS rule (14 CFR part 107), which establishes the

requirements for registration as a certified remote pilot in the United States. The certification exam covers some of the same

information about aeronautical charts and weather reports that you would find on a small aircraft pilot exam, as well as the rules

that deal specifically with small UAS. Legally, it is only necessary to have the part 107 license if you use UAS commercially, but I

recommend it for a couple of reasons. First, studying for it will make someone a better pilot regardless of how experienced they

are. The study materials are useful in the field and the certification process is a good way to start thinking of the drones as aircraft

rather than as toys. Second, the exam itself has only been around since January 2017, and since the guidelines say you must

recertify every 2 years, no one has had to do it yet. Basically, I expect that now is the best time to get the license because it will

not get any cheaper (now $150) nor any easier down the road. I would, at the very least, make sure that any pilot I hired held a

current part 107 license. Visit the FAA’s website for more information about how to certify.

How are drones being used in forestry research?

In a relatively short time, drones have made a large footprint in the forest research community. There are studies that deal with

all kinds of things: chemical application, pest and disease detection, tree counts, size measurements, fire studies, species ID,

drought detection, invasive species management, planting, and more. The Unmanned Aerial Systems lab at OSU have been

involved in a wide breath of projects also, including Swiss Needle Cast disease detection, Southwestern White Pine drought

tolerance, Using LiDAR to estimate forest inventory, Tree Height Estimations, Herbicide Efficacy Estimation, and others.

Personally, I am interested in how we can use multispectral and thermal sensors to decide when plants need water, not only in

forestry but in agriculture as well.

What should small landowners consider before purchasing a drone?

Because there are so many options, I would say first decide on a budget, then use that as a guide. If you just want to make maps

of forest stands, that could be accomplished relatively inexpensively, whereas making precise tree measurements or any sort of

health estimates typically requires more expensive hardware. Also, remember that the quality of these machines is rising rapidly

as their cost is falling, so it will be cheaper to achieve the same results in years to come.

For more information:

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (Drones): How they operate and their potential for improving your forest and rangeland management

(EM9190). https://catalog.extension.oregonstate.edu/em9190

FAA Unmanned Aircraft Systems: https://www.faa.gov/uas/

Cory Garms just finished his second year as a PhD student at Oregon State University. His PhD research focus is in forest biometrics.

It is the time of year when bough collectors are busy cutting evergreen boughs to sell to floral warehouses and wreath companies.

While some landowners regularly sell boughs from their property, for those who have not, getting into the business may seem

mysterious. Little information is widely available about pricing, specifications, locating buyers, and so forth.

Bough collectors may sometimes approach woodland owners about cutting boughs

from their trees. Owners of overgrown Christmas trees that otherwise may not be

worth much may be particularly interested in this opportunity. But it may seem

unsettling if you are approached by an unknown bough collector and do not know

whether they are trustworthy. A recent query I received about selling boughs prompted

me to find out some basics from those who have more contacts in industry. Below is a

summary of feedback that I received.

A landowner can expect to be paid around 15 to 20 cents per pound for their raw

material, where the collector does all the work of cutting and hauling. The bough

collector will in turn sell the material to a wholesaler for around 35 to 40 cents. This is

for noble fir, the most common material. Other species such as incense-cedar or Port-

Orford-cedar may command higher prices.

Some rules of thumb: ask for references; make sure their employees are insured; and draw up a simple contract stipulating the

payment, condition the trees are to be left in, and condition of the property (e.g. no

trash left behind or damage to the ground). It’s a good idea to be present while the

harvesting is taking place, and have the material weighed in front of you.

If you would like your trees to regenerate new bough material, it’s important for them

to be cut properly. Trees should not be stripped nearly to the top, leaving very little

foliage to regenerate. Boughs should also be cut far enough away from the trunk such

that there are remaining side branches with viable buds to grow back. The limb

diameter at the cut end should be no thicker than a thumb.

You also have the option to do the labor yourself and market your boughs directly,

which eliminates the middleman and brings higher prices. The Oregon Woodland

Cooperative has been successfully organizing its members to do precisely this for a

number of years. With a group of woodland owners to fill orders, they have more

marketing power and product consistency. If this interests you, consider contacting the

OWC to learn more. Their website is https://www.oregonwoodlandcooperative.com/.

A short fact sheet on producing boughs is available online: http://www.ntfpinfo.us/

docs/ifcae/Buttolph2012-FactsheetFirBoughsv112412.pdf

Photo: clairegren, Flickr.com

Noble fir foliage with deep color is desired. Photo: Pat Breen,

landscapeplants.oregonstate.edu

True fir cones stand upright on their branches. Photo: Ed Jensen,

oregonstate.edu/trees

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